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Sunday, June 3, 2012

Never sorry

Did you know that God was sorry once? and that it was a big deal?

It's in the Bible - right in Genesis. "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart." (6:5,6)

Wow. That was the reason for the Great Flood. God was sorry!

But even in His grief over how evil man had become, He showed mercy to Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives. And He showed Noah how they could escape the destruction of the world and of all life on land, by giving him blueprints to build a boat. The boat was unlike anything that had ever been built. It was 450 feet long and 75 feet wide and 45 feet tall (three stories plus the roof!) - the hull of it resembled that of an aircraft carrier in its shape: very stable in rough seas. And there would BE rough seas. The Bible says that "the fountains of the deep" were ruptured (that is, there were underground earthquakes) - and the firmament (which is King James-ese for the canopy of moist air very much like a Bermuda high pressure system and which kept the earth at a tropical temperature from the north pole all the way to the south pole) released its moisture upon the planet. In other words, for forty days and forty nights - it was MONSOON time. I can't begin to imagine the fury of that storm.

But the fact that God was sorry - that boggles the mind. God's never wrong. He's never made a mistake. Yet He was sorry. It made Him unutterably sad that people had turned their backs on Him to such a great degree. Only Noah "found grace" with Him. And so He set about rescuing Noah and his loved ones. The "Ark of Safety" - as it came to be known in scripture - is a symbol, a type, of Christ. He is our only protection from "the wrath to come." I want to point out something that might seem a little obvious, but once Noah and his family were in that ark, and GOD closed the door (talk about security!) He never changed His mind or made them walk the plank. They stayed inside that vessel until it was safe to come out.

Period.

Fast forward several thousand years from Noah's day. We are now living in the Age of Grace, where God again is putting up with the growing evil of mankind - growing in leaps and bounds, exponentially, even as it was in Noah's day.

And we who are in Christ (that is, who have entered into Christ in an intimate commitment to Him by grace alone through faith alone) are on that Ark of Safety.

Now, tucked into the writings of Paul - after knowing what happened to the world in Noah's day - there is a little verse that is often overlooked. It is Romans 11:29. "For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance." (KJV). This is the same word (repentance) that comes from the word "sorry" (in the KJV, "...it repenteth Me that I have made man...") back in Genesis 6. in other more modern translations, "without repentance" is translated "irrevocable." Whoa. Pretty strong words!

Wow. This means that when God gives someone something (like, oh I dunno, salvation for example?) or calls someone to a specific ministry or a calling, He is NEVER SORRY He did. NOT ONCE. He will see what He started through to completion - no matter how many detours there are. No matter how things seem. No matter how we feel. No matter how slim the odds are. No matter how heavy the baggage is. He's got it covered.